Jean Webster > Quotes

“It isn't the big troubles in life that require character. Anybody can rise to a crisis and face a crushing tragedy with courage, but to meet the petty hazards of the day with a laugh - I really think that requires spirit.
It's the kind of character that I am going to develop. I am going to pretend that all life is just a game which I must play as skillfully and fairly as I can. If I lose, I am going to shrug my shoulders and laugh - also if I win.”
― Jean Webster, Daddy Long Legs

“I'm going to enjoy every second, and I'm going to know I'm enjoying it while I'm enjoying it. Most people don't live; they just race. They are trying to reach some goal far away on the horizon, and in the heat of the going they get so breathless and panting that they lose sight of the beautiful, tranquil country they are passing through; and then the first thing they know, they are old and worn out, and it doesn't make any difference whether they've reached the goal or not.”
― Jean Webster

“Half of the time I don't know what they're talking about; their jokes seem to relate to a past that everyone but me has shared. I'm a foreigner in the world and I don't understand the language.”
― Jean Webster

“Thank heaven I don't inherit God from anybody! I am free to make mine up as I wish Him. He's kind and sympathetic and imaginative and forgiving and understanding - and He has a sense of humor.”
― Jean Webster

“It isn't the big pleasures that count the most; it's making a great deal out of the little ones.”
― Jean Webster

“I believe absolutely in my own free will and my own power to accomplish - and that is the belief that moves mountains. ”
― Jean Webster, Daddy Long Legs

“The world is full of happiness, and plenty to go round, if you are only willing to take the kind that comes your way.”
― Jean Webster, Daddy Long Legs

“This is your heart.Keep it locked until the chap turns up who has the key.”
― Jean Webster, Just Patty

“It isn't the great big pleasures that count the most; it's making a great deal out of the little
ones--I've discovered the true secret of happiness, Daddy, and that is to live in the now. Not to be
for ever regretting the past, or anticipating the future; but to get the most that you can out of this
very instant.

”
― Jean Webster, Daddy Long Legs

“Is it snowing where you are? All the world that I see from my tower is draped in white and the flakes are coming down as big as pop-corns. It's late afternoon - the sun is just setting (a cold yellow colour) behind some colder violet hills, and I am up in my window seat using the last light to write to you.”
― Jean Webster, Daddy Long Legs

“... in spite of being happier than I ever dreamed I could be, I'm also soberer. The fear that something may happen to you rests like a shadow on my heart. Always before I could be frivolous and carefree and unconcerned, because I had nothing precious to lose. But now -- I shall have a Great Big Worry all the rest of my life. Whenever you are away from me I shall be thinking of all the automobiles that can run over you, or the signboards that can fall on your head or the dreadful, squirmy germs that you may be swallowing.”
― Jean Webster, Daddy Long Legs

“The more I study men, the more I realize that they are nothing in the world but boys grown too big to be spankable.”
― Jean Webster, Dear Enemy

“Oh, I'm developing a beautiful character! It droops a bit under cold and frost, but it does grow fast when the sun shines.

That's the way with everybody. I don't agree with the theory that adversity and sorrow and disappointment develop moral strength. The happy people are the ones who are bubbling over with kindliness. ”
― Jean Webster, Daddy Long Legs

“Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

You never answered my question and it was very important.

ARE YOU BALD?”
― Jean Webster, Daddy Long Legs

“He and I always think the same things are funny, and that is such a lot; it's dreadful when two people's senses of humour are antagonistic. I don't
believe there's any bridging that gulf!
And he is--Oh, well! He is just himself, and I miss him, and miss him, and miss him. The whole world seems empty and aching. I hate the moonlight because it's beautiful and he isn't here to see
it with me. But maybe you've loved somebody, too, and you know? If you have, I don't need to explain; if you haven't, I can't explain.”
― Jean Webster, Daddy Long Legs

“Her mother was a Rutherford. The family came over in the ark, and were connected by marriage with Henry the VIII. On her father's side they date back further than Adam. On the topmost branches of her family tree there's a superior breed of monkeys with very fine silky hair and extra long tails.”
― Jean Webster

“She was by nature a sunny soul”
― Jean Webster, Daddy-Long-Legs

“I went to bed last night utterly dejected; I thought I was never going to amount to anything, and that you had thrown away your money for nothing. But what do you think? I woke up this morning with a beautiful new plot in my head, and I've been going about all day planning my characters, just as happy as I could be. No one can ever accuse me of being a pessimist! If I had a husband and twelve children swallowed by an earthquake one day, I'd bob up smilingly the next morning and commence to look for another set. ~Jershua Abbott”
― Jean Webster, Daddy-Long-Legs

“What do you think is my favourite book? Just now, I mean; I change every three days. "Wuthering Heights." Emily Bronte was quite young when she wrote it, and had never been outside of Haworth churchyard. She had never known any men in her life; how could she imagine a man like Heathcliffe?

I couldn't do it, and I'm quite young and never outside the John Grier Asylum - I've had every chance in the world. Sometimes a dreadful fear comes over me that I'm not a genius. Will you be awfully disappointed, Daddy, if I don't turn out to be a great author?”
― Jean Webster, Daddy Long Legs

“We had a bishop this morning and what do you think he said?
"The most beneficent promise made us in the Bible is this,'The poor ye have always with you.' They were put here in order to keep us charitable."
The poor, please observe, being a sort of useful domestic animal. If I hadn't grown into such a perfect lady, I should have gone up after service and told him what I thought.”
― Jean Webster, Daddy Long Legs

“I look forward all day to evening, and then I put an "engaged" on the door and get into my nice red bath robe and furry slippers and pile all the cushions behind me on the couch, and light the brass student lamp at my elbow, and read and read and read. One book isn't enough. I have four going at once. Just now, they're Tennyson's poems and "Vanity Fair" and Kipling's "Plain Tales" and - don't laugh - "Little Women." I find that I am the only girl in college who wasn't brought up on "Little Women." I haven't told anybody though (that would stamp me as queer). I just quietly went and bought it with $1.12 of my last month's allowance; and the next time somebody mentions pickled limes, I'll know what she is talking about!”
― Jean Webster, Daddy Long Legs

“I've discovered the true secret of happiness, Daddy, and that is to live in the now. Not to be for ever regretting the past, or anticipating the future; but to get the most that you can out of this very instant...I'm going to enjoy every second, and I'm going to know I'm enjoying it while I'm enjoying it. ”
― Jean Webster

“The world is full of happiness, and plenty to go around, if you are only willing to take the kind that comes your way...”
― Jean Webster, Daddy Long Legs

“I ate breakfast in the kitchen by candle-light, and then drove the five miles to the station through the most glorious October colouring. The sun came up on the way, and the swamp maples and dogwood glowed crimson and orange and the stone walls and cornfields sparkled with hoar frost; the air was keen and clear and full of promise. I knew something was going to happen. ”
― Jean Webster, Daddy Long Legs

“Kualitas paling penting yang perlu dimiliki oleh seseorang adalah imajinasi. Imajinasi membuat orang mampu menempatkan diri mereka di tempat orang lain. Imajinasi membuat mereka menjadi orang yang baik dan bisa bersimpati serta penuh pengertian.”
― Jean Webster, Daddy Long Legs

“I have an evening dress, pink mull over silk (I'm perfectly beautiful in that), and a blue church dress, and a dinner dress of red veiling with Oriental trimming (makes me look like a Gipsy), and another of rose-coloured challis, and a grey street suit, and an every-day dress for classes. That wouldn't be an awfully big wardrobe for Julia Rutledge Pendleton, perhaps, but for Jerusha Abbott - Oh, my!”
― Jean Webster, Daddy Long Legs

“‎Be careful not to keep your eyes glued to detail. Stand far enough away to get a perspective of the whole.”
― Jean Webster, Daddy Long Legs

“I think that the most necessary quality for any person to have is imagination. It makes people able to put themselves in other people's places. It makes them kind and sympathetic and understanding.”
― Jean Webster, Daddy Long Legs

“وهكذا هو الحال مع كل الناس،فأنا لا أتفق مع النظرية القائلة بأن المصائب والبلايا وخيبة الأمل المتكررة هى التى تخلق الشخصية القوية، إنهم السعداء فقط هم اللذين ينصخون بالحب والحنان..”
― Jean Webster, Daddy Long Legs

“This is an extra letter in the middle of the month because I'm rather lonely tonight. It's awfully stormy; the snow is beating against my tower. All the lights are out on the campus, but I drank black coffee and I can't go to sleep.

I had a supper party this evening consisting of Sallie and Julia and Leonora Fenton - and sardines and toasted muffins and salad and fudge and coffee. Julia said she'd had a good time, but Sallie stayed to help wash the dishes.”
― Jean Webster, Daddy Long Legs

“The world is so full of a number of things, I am sure we should all be as happy as kings. The world is full of happiness, and plenty to go round, if you are only willing to take the kind that comes your way.”
― Jean Webster, Daddy Long Legs

“Where do you think my new novel is? In the waste basket. I can see myself that it's no good on earth, and when a loving author realizes this, what would be the judgment of a critical public?”
― Jean Webster, Daddy Long Legs

“Saya memang suka pada topi-topi serta benda-benda yang cantik, tapi saya tidak boleh menggadaikan masa depan saya untuk membeli barang-barang seperti itu.”
― Jean Webster

“Jerusha leaned forward watching with curiosity - and a touch of wistfulness - the stream of carriages and automobiles that rolled out of the asylum gates. In imagination she followed first one equipage, then another, to the big houses dotted along the hillside. She pictured herself in a fur coat and a velvet hat trimmed with feathers leaning back in the seat and nonchalantly murmuring "Home" to the driver. But on the door-sill of her home the picture grew blurred.”
― Jean Webster, Daddy Long Legs

“Do you want to know something? I have three pairs of kid gloves. I've had kid mittens before from the Christmas tree, but never real kid gloves with five fingers. I take them out and try them on every little while. It's all I can do not to wear them to classes.”
― Jean Webster, Daddy Long Legs

“Behold me - a Sophomore! I came up last Friday, sorry to leave Lock Willow, but glad to see the campus again. It is a pleasant sensation to come back to something familiar. I am beginning to feel at home in college, and in command of the situation; I am beginning, in fact, to feel at home in the world - as though I really belonged to it and had not just crept in on sufferance.”
― Jean Webster, Daddy Long Legs

“I have a terrible wanderthirst; the very sight of a map makes me want to put on my hat and take an umbrella and start. I
shall see before I die the palms and temples of the South.”
― Jean Webster, Daddy Long Legs

“It seems to me that a man who can think straight along for forty-seven years without changing a single idea ought to be kept in a cabinet as a curiosity.”
― Jean Webster, Daddy Long Legs

“That is the way Connecticut goes, in a series of Marcelle waves; and Lock Willow Farm is just on the crest of one wave. The barns used to be across the road where they obstructed the view, but a kind flash of lightning came from heaven and burnt them down.”
― Jean Webster, Daddy Long Legs

“The room marked with a cross is not where the murder was committed, but the one that I occupy.”
― Jean Webster, Daddy Long Legs

“I've read seventeen novels and bushels of poetry-- really necessary novels like Vanity Fair and Richard Feverel and Alice in Wonderland. Also Emerson's Essays and Lockhart's Life of Scott and the first volume of Gibbon's Roman Empire and half of Benvenuto Cellini's Life--wasn't he entertaining? He used to saunter out and casually kill a man before breakfast.”
― Jean Webster, Daddy Long Legs

“The bitterness of wearing your enemies' cast-off clothes eats into your soul. If I wore silk stockings for the rest of my life, I don't believe I could obliterate the scar.”
― Jean Webster, Daddy Long Legs

“It's much more entertaining to live books than to write them.”
― Jean Webster, Daddy Long Legs

“Getting an education is an awfully wearing process!”
― Jean Webster, Daddy Long Legs

“Anybody can rise to a crisis and face a crushing tragedy with courage, but to meet the petty hazards of the day with a laugh- I really think that requires spirit!”
― Jean Webster, Daddy Long Legs

“I don't believe it pays to be a great author.”
― Jean Webster, Daddy Long Legs

“It isn't the great big pleasures that count the most; it's making a great deal out of the little ones--I've discovered the true secret of happiness, Daddy, and that is to live in the now. Not to be for ever regretting the past, or anticipating the future; but to get the most that you can out of this very instant.”
― Jean Webster, Daddy Long Legs

“اعتقد أن ما يهم الإنسان ليست الأفراح الكبرى لكن المسرات و المتع الصغيرة التى تصنع الشىء الكثير، لقد اكتشفت السر الحقيقى للسعادة يا والدى؛ وهو أن تعيش فى الآن فقط و تهتم باللحظة الحاضرة. لا تندم على الماضى أو تعمل حسابا للمستقبل، لكن عليك أن تحصل على أكثر ما تستطيع من هذه اللحظة الحاضرة التى تعيش فيها”
― Jean Webster, Daddy Long Legs

“إن معظم الناس لا يعيشون، إنهم يتسابقون و يجرون، إنهم يحاولون الوصول إلى هدف يلوح بعيدا فى الأفق، ومن خلال حرارة الجرى ولهاث الأنفاس يفقدون كل قدرة على الرؤية الصحيحة للأرض الجميلة الهادئة التى يمرقون خلالها؛ ثم بعد ذلك فإن أول شىء يدركونه ويحسون به فعلا هو أنهم بلغوا أرذل العمر و أن التعب قد أضناهم ولا يهم بعد ذلك إذا كانوا قد بلغوا أهدافهم أم لا.
إننى قررت أن أجلس و أتمهل فى الطريق و أنهمك فى جمع وتكويم نتف من المتع الصغيرة”
― Jean Webster, Daddy Long Legs

“Jervie me hizo creer que era un hombre brillante, encantador e inteligente. Pero está muy lejos de aquella descripción. El tal doctor es alto y muy delgado, de pelo gris y unos ojos fríos de un color indefinido. Durante la hora que pasé en su compañía, no mostró ni la más leve sonrisa. ¿Habrá cometido algún crimen que le roe la conciencia día y noche? ¡Es tan sociable como una tumba!”
― Jean Webster, Dear Enemy